Political pundits were probably asking themselves the question almost at once: Would success spoil the Polish Party of Friends of Beer? What would happen, fresh from the party's ballot box success on Oct. 27, when, contrary to all expectations, including its own, the final tally of seats for Poland's new Parliament was 16--count 'em, 16--for the Friends of Beer?

President Lech Walesa on Friday nominated Bronislaw Geremek, a longtime adviser and more recently an adversary, to try to form Poland's next government. Geremek, who has been closely involved with Solidarity since the union was formed in 1980, represents the Democratic Union party, which finished in first place by a narrow margin in the Oct. 27 parliamentary elections. Democratic Union won only 13% of the votes in the splintered voting, which saw 29 parties gain seats in Parliament.

Poland's President Lech Walesa, moving to create a government capable of decisive economic reform after elections that resulted in a splintered Parliament, proposed Tuesday that he become his own prime minister. Walesa said he expects to form a coalition made up of groups rooted in the Solidarity trade union movement, preferably with himself as prime minister. An alternative, he said, is a government of the seven parties that won the greatest number of votes.

President Lech Walesa noted that his nation's politicians were difficult to reach by telephone Monday morning. They had gone through a rough night. "They are sleeping," Walesa said. "They are afraid to wake up." The politicians had considerable company among Poles who found the results of Sunday's parliamentary elections dismaying and troubling.

Polish voters will go to the polls Sunday to elect a new Parliament, one that will replace the Communist-dominated assembly that has complicated political and economic reform here for more than two years. Although it will be the first fully free parliamentary election here since the end of World War II, public opinion surveys suggest that a low voter turnout is expected, largely because of a poor public regard for politicians and political institutions.

Poland's Solidarity government survived a tense parliamentary confrontation with ex-Communists on Saturday when Parliament refused to accept its resignation. The vote strengthened the government of Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki and eased a three-day standoff that had threatened Poland with its worst political crisis since the overthrow of communism in 1989.

It is the summer season of strikes once again in Poland. On any given day, about 20 labor stoppages are going on, strike alerts are posted in factories, trams are shut down in the cities, buses stop running, garbage collectors stand sullen and idle beside their trucks. But this strike season has brought a significant change. The general public no longer finds itself alarmed or excited by strikes.

President Lech Walesa has backed down, at least for now, from his threat to dissolve the Communist-dominated Parliament, but the political battle that surrounded Walesa's feint has suggested to Poles the presidential style that lies in store for them for the next five years. Based on evidence of the controversy surrounding Walesa's goading and threats to the Sejm, or Parliament, it will be, as some of Walesa's opponents predicted and feared, an activist presidency.

The political struggle over Poland's economic recovery plan has intensified, with new threats of strikes and moves by President Lech Walesa to grant emergency powers to the government to dislodge stalled economic legislation in Parliament. Presidential aides say Walesa also is increasingly contemplating invoking his powers to dissolve the Parliament, which on Friday rejected his amendments to a law setting rules for parliamentary elections, now anticipated for October.

President Lech Walesa vetoed a law drafted for Poland's first fully democratic parliamentary election. He exercised the presidential right of veto despite a warning from Mikolaj Kozakiewicz, Speaker of the Sejm (lower house), that such a move would make it impossible for the election to be held in October as planned.